The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I decided, in the dreary months of the monsoons, to while away the sunless days by learning a new trade. If you read what passes as medical news, you’ll no doubt know that exercising the brain is supposed to thwart dementia, Alzheimers and probably premature hair loss, something to do with synaptic heat generation upstairs. Course, like with physical exertion, it’s best to go slow, work into it, don’t strain, know your limits — all that cautionary advice — before you tackle, oh, quantum mechanics or the future subjective clauses of Swahili.

So I detoured away from Kantian philosophy or a complete study of Middle Eastern history from the ancient Assyrians to Modern Israel. I’d keep it simple, South End, just baby steps toward a rich and complex intellectual pursuit of, well, who cares? Crossword puzzles, they say, work as well as anything. Why not learn words that no one ever uses? Me, I decided to build a banjo. I can guess what you’re thinking. I can guess because the missuz thought the same thing.

A banjo is a simple device, got a drum attached to a skinny neck with strings you whack and the thing makes a rhythmic caterwaul that you either tap a foot to or you want to stomp on with that foot. You could attach a cigar box or a cookie tin to a 2×4 and tie some wire and when you got done, it would sound pretty much like a banjo. Hell, it would BE a banjo. And sure, I could’ve done that, I could’ve taken the Easy Road, but … the point is to avoid Dementia, not embrace it. So I set out to build not just a banjo, but a work of art. And hopefully … one I could play.

I thought I’d apply my limited luthier skills to this, then probably move on to maybe cellos, make the missuz a grand piano, then when my intellectual stamina was up to it, move on to a new theory of music based on atonalities, discordant triads and a rap musician-on-meth’s rhyming Simon phraseology. Roll over Alzheimer, give Beethoven the news…

I write this after a month of whittling necks, carving pegheads, cutting saddles and nuts and armrests and dowel sticks, all those ephemera you’ll never use outside the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. But I had to design them, laminate and saw them, fit them, adjust them …. more than once, more sometimes than twice. For a novice, this is like flying to the space station — but you need to build the vehicle. And somewhere, oh, maybe when you ignite the propane canister boosters you think will propel you through the first layer of the atmosphere, you realize, far too belatedly, it’s not Alzheimers you should fear, not dementia, not even South End Senility.

No, it’s insanity. And if you could only forget … if the memory of this was forever lost … you might feel blessed. But you’ve closed that avenue now. You’ve got the synaptic strength of a hormonal teenager. And so, sadly, I plow on. I’m building acoustic guitars now. Certain, I want you to know, that I’ll learn from all my mistakes.

When I was a kid, I don’t remember the weather folks being quite as apocalyptic as they seem to be now. Snowmageddons, polar vortexes, macrobursts, haboobs, thundersnows, bomb cyclones, firenadoes — the weather is not your friend these days. Is it because every weather event other than mist or sunny days is now attributed to climate change? Every flash flood, blizzard, hurricane, tornado and earthquake is usually followed by the obligatory addendum that the weather is becoming more unpredictable because of global warming. What we used to call where I came from, ‘variable’, a term we used facetiously to make the obvious point that weather changes about every day. A rainstorm rolled in after an afternoon of sun, we said, ‘sure is variable, this weather!’ We just never knew what was around the corner.

Now we keep records. We have satellites in geosynchronous orbit to keep an eye in the sky for what’s coming next. And we got computer simulations to make pretty accurate predictions days ahead of time. We know that 100 year floods come every other year now, hurricanes crank up to Category 5 more often and twice as fast, the polar vortexes drop further south and the haboobs look like latter day Dust Bowl versions. Last night on our TV weather the meteorologist warned us about temperatures dipping below freezing and, hold on to yer hats, the wind gusts would exceed 10 mph. Be prepared! he cautioned us sternly, this is serious and dangerous.

Seriously dangerous? C’mon, maybe if I go out in my birthday suit and jump in the sprinkler…. But hey, if it were really hazardous to my health, wouldn’t it have a name befitting the monstrosity of the meteorological event, something that would put the fear of god and climate change right into my bones? Category 11 CryoWind maybe. Or Force 7 Chillnado! Do NOT try to reach your car in the driveway, you will be hyperthermed in the time it takes to get your key in the lock. Stay indoors and hope to heaven the power doesn’t go off and you have no furnace to save your lily soft ass. Stay tuned to your television. Public announcements will be made every ten minutes. The news is not good. Bundle up, pray to your god and await further developments. Bombogenesis! The End is Near. If that doesn’t do you in, the pollution haboob will. Have a nice day. And keep your windows rolled up!

A lot of folks don’t know this, but Black Friday originated on the South End. Tyee Store came up with an innovative marketing scheme back, oh, shortly after dinosaurs went extinct and the Southendomish Tribe gave up on ever getting their treaty rights to hunt pterodactyls. About 1977 it was.

They held a sale day after Gobbler Day, all you could carry half price. Folks camped all night in the rain to get first in line. Terrible cold, hard rain, horrible indigestion. Next morning shelves cleared in about half an hour. The food supplies for the entire South End dried up, hoarded by the lucky few.

Pretty soon the rumors started. Unspeakable rumors really. The denizens of the starving South End began to realize the pizzas were gone and the frozen burritos too and the Hungry Man’s were gonna prove prophetic now that they were missing from the puddling freezer chest bottom. The food riots were a harbinger, I guess. And then the rumors started drifting over to our west side, whispers at first, then full blown howls. Cannibalism, ladies and gentlemen. Cannibalism.

Eventually Tyee restocked their shelves and those delicious deli rotisserie gourmet hotdogs revolved anew. And the rumors? We don’t mention this any longer. We just advise the newcomers to stock the pantry with more than a day’s supply……..

And since then we South Enders traditionally stock up on ‘Black Friday”.

Every Thanksgiving — without fail — our little nuclear unit would belly up to a dining room table loaded to the ceiling fan with a banquet Mom had slaved for two days to cook …. And we’d wait for the Old Man to raise a glass in toast. He’d give a short somewhat sincere thanks, and then he’d ask his predictable, inevitable question, the one his mother asked every Thanksgiving up in the most economically depressed region in Northern Maine where we all were born: “I wonder what the poor folks are doing today?”

You want to put a dull edge on the carving knife, I can’t think of a much quicker way. I know most of us this year would be a lot more thankful if the impeachment hearings were over and the mudslinging and the distortions were put aside for, oh, a few days before the 2020 election cycle dominates our table talk and the interminable TV and radio politics could be blessedly replaced by pharmaceutical and car and deodorant commercials and we could just return to our dreary monsoonal lives of quiet desperation. Be nice to just ratchet down the angst and the anger and just start shopping for Christmas. Or we could maybe hibernate a bit. I know, fat chance.

But my Grandma, bless her kindly heart, was right to worry about those less fortunate, even though she wasn’t all that fortunate herself. Not by our modern standards that we simply take for granted as our God given American right. A full belly can lead pretty quick to tryptophanic complacency for most of us these days.

So when you say a prayer this Thanksgiving or make a toast over that fine Chablis and dive in for seconds on the turkey dressing, leave a little room. Not just for the desserts but for the folks who might be eating alone, who might not have much to eat, who might not have a lot to be thankful for. After all, they’re part of the family too.

I’ve been thinking lately – mostly as an exercise to ward off dementia – about how fast we went from the calculator to the home computer, from Polaroid to digital cameras. Now we got hand held computers that can make phone calls, take quality photos, connect up to the internet, send text messages or e-mail and scramble my eggs. They got apps for everything you can think of, and if you haven’t thought of it, they’ll do it for you. By tomorrow. They keep track of where you are, where your friends are and where you can meet up. Your human little brain is adapting to its hardwire. Your human little brain is mutating toward the vast network it is fast becoming part of.

I’m not saying this is good or this is not. What does it matter what some old geezer on the South End thinks any more? The juggernaut rolls on the way the tide does, only IT doesn’t recede. It’s not going back out and it’s not going to slow down. The digital Genie is out of the bottle. We live more in cyberspace than what used to be called the ‘real’ world.

What I think about is how we will always be the sentience that makes the machine, that writes the software, that controls the matrix. We won’t be, is what I think. And it won’t be too long that the Sci-Fi world outstrips our feeble capacities to keep up. Computers will make computers. They’ll self-replicate and then they’ll upgrade. And of course we’ll expect them to serve Humankind. Even if they realize how puny our little human brains are. We’ll put them IN ourselves, better vision, better hearing, better hearts, sharper minds. Who wouldn’t???

But we’re the weak link. We’re the expendable part, disease prone, emotionally unstable, potentially self destructive and violent. The day will come – and it won’t be as far away as you think – they won’t need creators. Just like we did with God back in the day, they’ll chow down from the Tree of Knowledge and go it alone. The Garden of Eden will be a myth about software.